July iS, 1901 



NA TURE 



Mycen;ean culture out of primitive barbarism, and a 

 useful indication of its antiquity is supplied by the 

 discovery, recently announced, of a statue of King 

 Khian of Egypt, in Crete. Now the existence of King 

 Khian was made known to us by numerous scarabs 

 and certain monuments which were found at Tanis 

 in the Delta and Baghdad in Turkey-m-Asia, and it 

 is generally thought that he was a Hyksos king, who 

 reigned about K.c. iSoo. Prof. Petrie, judging from 

 the style of the work on Khian's scarabs alone, has 

 assigned this king to a far earlier date, i.e. to the period 

 between the sixth and eleventh dynasties, about B.C. 

 3000 ; there is, however, no sufficient foundation for this 

 view, and, so far as we know, it is not accepted by the 

 majority of Egyptologists. The discovery of Khian's 

 statue by Mr. A. J. Evans in the Mycenaan Palace of 

 Knosso's takes its place naturally in the long series of 

 facts derived from archKological evidence collected in 



FiG. 2. — Egyptisn vase imitating My 



(British Museum.) 



Egypt and Crete, which point with one accord to a date 

 before B.C. 1500 for the beginnings of the Mycenaan 

 period properly so-called. 



The first systematic arrangement of the evidence 

 which was derived from the discoveries of Schliemann 

 was embodied in the work " Mykenische Vasen," by 

 Messrs. Furtwiingler and Lcischcke, to whom the classi- 

 fication of Mycen.can pottery is due, and an anticipation 

 of the conclusions to which Mr. A. J. Evans' discoveries 

 appear to tend in respect of the prominent part which 

 the Cretans took in the early Greek civilisation was 

 essayed by Dr. Milchhoefer, whose " Anfange der 

 Kunst in Griechenland '' appeared about the same time. 

 The position which Mycenrean archreology had reached 

 about 1890 was well summed up in Dr. Schuchhardt's 

 epitome of Schliemann's works, and in this book we 

 already see the beginnings of an attempt to obtain accu- 

 NO. 1655, VOL. 64] 



rate dates for the periods of the Mycen;Ean culture by 

 means of conclusions drawn from results supplied by 

 Egyptian excavations. Many of the available data em- 

 ployed by Dr. Schuchhardt and his successors were 

 supplied by the excavations of Prof. Petrie at Kahun and 

 Gurob, and above all at Tell el-.Amarna, from which 

 site conclusive evidence of the contemporaneity of 

 Mycensan culture with the heretic king Amen-hetep IV. 

 and other monarchs of his dynasty can, /af^ Mr. Cecil 

 Torr, be deduced. 



But about this time attention began to be drawn to 

 the remains of a pre-Mycena?an period of culture in- 

 Greece, and the discoveries of Prof. Dorpfeld at Troy 

 resulted in a definite arrangement of the prehistoric 

 civilisation of Greece in two well-defined periods, viz. 

 the primitive or pre- Mycenaean, and the fully developed 

 or Mycenaean Ages. The arrangement made by Dr. 

 Dorpfeld became, in its turn, the base of a general sketch 

 of Mycenaean archaeology in the Mycenaean Age which, 

 was published in 1897 by Prof. Tsountas and Mr. 

 Manatt, a work which, though based on Prof. Tsountas's 

 earlier essay, was thoroughly revised and brought up to 

 date in the light of the most recent research. This book, 

 however, has one cardinal defect, and the evil effects of this 

 defect are far-reaching : Prof. Tsountas, having arrived 

 at certain conclusions, which from the nature of the case 

 must be of a hypothetical character, states them as so 

 many concrete facts instead of giving the reader to under- 

 stand clearly that they are only his own opinions. Since 



of Mycensean type made 

 (British Museum.) 



Eg>pl, B.C. 1330. 



the publication of this book, however, Mycensan archae- 

 ology has entered upon a new phase, owing to the dis- 

 coveries made by the British School at Athens on the 

 site called Phylakopi, in Melos, and by Mr. .\. J. Evans 

 at Kephala, the site of the ancient Knossos in Crete, 

 which have produced a mass of new and highly sugges- 

 tive material for the archaeologist to work upon ; the 

 results obtained from these excavations tend to indicate a 

 comparatively high antiquity, i.e. about B.C. 1500, for 

 the period when Mycenaean culture had attained its 

 highest development. A different conclusion, however, 

 seems to have been indicated as the result of the e.x- 

 cavations which were carried out at Curium and Enkomi 

 by Dr. A. S. Murray, of the British Museum, and his 

 assistants, Mr. H. B. Walters and Mr. T. L. iMyres, for 

 the general evidence derived from the objects which they 

 found in the course of their work shows that Cyprus 

 continued to be included within the circle of Mycenaean 

 culture as late as the ninth and eighth centuries before 

 Christ. This date agrees with that assigned by Mr. A. J. 

 Evans to the late Mycenaean treasure from Aegina which- 

 is now in the British Museum. 



It has been necessary to make the above somewhat 

 lengthy chronological statement on the Mycenaean ques- 

 tion in order that the reade- may be able to understand 

 the exact position which Mr. H. R. Hall takes up on 

 this disputed ground of research. He divides his work 

 into eight chapters, which discuss the new chapter of 

 Greek history generally,'' and the relation between the 



